Pac-10 football: Picks of the week (starting with Cal-Oregon State)

Each week, there’s a point spread that makes me wonder if the betting public has seen the teams play, which is no doubt the same thing the betting public wonders about me when it reads the Hotline picks.

This week, the Cal-Oregon State line has left me a bit befuddled.

The Bears opened as a 6.5-point favorite, and the number has climbed to 7.5. That seems mighty steep if you consider:

1. Oregon State has won five of the past seven matchups and three in a row in Berkeley. Clearly, Mike Riley and Mark Banker know how to scheme for Cal.

2. The comparative scores against USC: The Beavers lost by six in the Coliseum, while the Bears lost by 27 in Memorial Stadium.

(According to the current line, the betting public thinks the Beavers will lose at Cal by more than they lost at USC. Hmmmmm …)

3. Oregon State’s three losses have come to teams with a combined record of 19-4: USC, Arizona (by five) and Cincinnati (by 10).

4. OSU is usually a very strong finisher while Cal is usually a fairly weak finisher (5-8 the past four Novembers).

I’m not projecting an OSU win, although it wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprising.

But a touchdown? That feels 3-4 points too high given the way the teams have played against each other and the way they’ve played the past 4-5 weeks.

Last week: 2-2Season: 22-25-3Five-star special: 4-5

All picks against the spread.
Lines taken from Thursday’s Mercury News.

OREGON (minus-6.5) at STANFORD: I’m on record predicting a Stanford victory, and I’d probably take the Cardinal with the points even if I thought Oregon would win. But the best bet on the board might be “over” the 57.5 total. Gimme: Stanford.

OREGON STATE (plus-7) at CAL: Cal hasn’t defended the pass very well and OSU’s Sean Canfield is the No. 3 rated QB in the conference. Hard to imagine Cal will keep the Rodgers Brothers quiet, so it’s up to the Bears offense to keep up. Gimme: Oregon State.

USC (minus-10) at ARIZONA STATE: ASU doesn’t have the offense to move the ball consistently on a vulnerable USC defense while Barkley and Co. find a way to score enough to cover, especially with playmaker Stanley Havili expected back. Gimme: USC

WASHINGTON (plus-4.5) at UCLA: UCLA’s offense showed some life against Oregon State, although it was too little and too late. No substantive reason for thinking this, but it feels like the Bruins, despite their spate of injuries, have more left in the tank than the Huskies. Loser moves the the outskirts of the bowl bubble. Gimme: UCLA.

WASHINGTON STATE (plus-33) at ARIZONA: Cougars have done well as a big dog and should continue that trend as Arizona, looking ahead to Cal, comes with less than its best (but still more than enough to win). Gimme: Washington State.

Straight-up winners: Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA and Arizona.

Five-star special: Looked good last week when OSU was up 19-3 on UCLA, and then … not so good. This week, I’m going with the hot team: Not Oregon — Washington State. The Cougs have covered three weeks in a row (ASU, Cal and Notre Dame) and make it four with a 20-something point loss in Tucson.

Jon Wilner

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that hasn’t happened since “joey heisman” and this is certainly not the year it’s going to happen

hey wilner…what were you watching while I was watching the Ducks run 600 yards up on the TROJANS??????????

wow

gsc

and win or lose, you will rank the beavers as all their losses are “quality” loses, right?

Season:22-25-3

how’s the spread doing against the public this season? 22-25-3? LOL

Broncoboss

I believe Stanford will battle Oregon tough but I don’t believe they will win the game…The Ducks over the Cardinal in a fairly close one…I believe Cal handles the Beavers easily…

Boise State has a tough one tonight in Rustin, LA. The Broncos will need to play well to beat LA Tech..Everyone wants to give BSU an undefeated season, but they have some toughies ahead…State rival Idaho will be an emotional big game. Nevada is still undefeated in the WAC and putting up big numbers. Utah State is much improved and will test BSU! Boise will have to earn every win they get!!!

B

My biggest problem with this is a lot of the factors you cite, Jon, are pretty meaningless for predicting the future. You’re citing 13 games over four year in Nov as meaningful predictors of future success in Nov…try taking a stat class. That sample size is far too small to small to take anything from. Probably true with historical OSU/Cal, too, though it may be a fair point that there’s some sort of matchup there that favors OSU. Then again, I think it’s fair to say OSU has some sort of matchup advantage against USC, too, if you’re going to use that logic, in which case you lose the 2nd point. At most you get one of them, and I still doubt either of them are meaningful for future prediction.

Something that IS meaningful for predicting the future, by the way, has Cal as a 2.5 point favorite before home field advantage (Sagarin’s predictor ratings). Count in home field and Cal’s a 5.5-6 point favorite…so you’re making a good call taking OSU against the line of 7, but I think the line is much closer to where it should be than your article implies.

GBBS

Riley has something to prove against OSU, so I think you will see a good performance from Cal and they will win.

From a betting perspective, I would take 33 points and Wazzu. The most points they have scored all year is 43. I would think WSU could put up at least 10.

Boy that Louisiana Tech team looks so good, I mean they are 3 – 5 it will be a miracle if they don’t win tonight. Puhlease! Step away from the koolaid Blount.

As far as the spread on the Oregon – stanfurd game goes, if we look at Sagarin ratings the spread should be more like 9 or 10.

Onewoodwacker

gsc brings up “quality” loses.

According to Sagarin’s computer UW played the #1 SOS in the Nation:

The teams they have played this season have a combined record of: 47-17 (3 of those loses came from Washington) and 5 of those teams are in the top 25.

To me – a loss is just another damn loss and they are keeping my Dawgs from a Bowl Game! We NEED to beat UCLA tomorrow!

P. O’Brien

Jon, I have to wonder if you have ever played organized football on any level. Have you watched Stanford play this year?

Picking Stanford for a win over Oregon is right up there with your selection of USC at #2 in the rankings a couple weeks ago.

Here’s a simpe piece of advice to someone who is paid for writing down his observations about the game. Try to discipline yourself when you are watching games by focusing on the line of scrimmage. If you need to Tivo the games and re-watch them – fine. Look carefully to see who has the edge – play after play – at the line of scrimmage.

If you do this you would never have been boosting the stature of USC this year. And you certainly would not be picking Stanford straight up over the Ducks this weekend.

I

P. O’Brien

You have the over-under pick of the week, right – Oregon-Stanford at 57.5: Oregon wins something like 41-31.

The Wisdom Cow

Jon compares OS and Cal versus U$C, ignoring their efforts against UCLA. Keep cherry picking for you hatred of Cal, Wilner. I would consider you a hack, but did you read Tarfur’s latest Comical “list” piece on the Gate.

UGH!

ranger99

Broncoboss – If you consider Idaho, Nevada, and Utah State to be tough competition for the Broncos then they clearly are not a BCS quality team.

FarmSceptic

well said ranger99. his strategy of boasting about the difficulty of his upcoming opponents backfires and just makes the general public realize that BSU must not be that good if they’re worried about those teams.

I’ll tell you what drives me nuts about Jon. He seems to lack a basic understanding of the team-elements generally predict success in football – especially college football:

#1 coaching
#2 is line-play on both sides of the ball
#3 is quarterback leadership (decision-making – not arm-strength)

Not understanding the relative value of these components explains Jon’s conclusions this year and his generally poor prediction-record.

Jon had BYU ranked #2 earlier this year!

He continues to rank 6-2 USC in the top ten. This is a team that lost to an unranked – and pretty poor – 3-5 Washington team. USC getting thrashed by a good Oregon team with an experienced QB was not a tough prediction if you looked at the USC games with Washington, Ohio State, Notre Dame.

All Jon could see was Matt Barkley’s arm. His arm’s fine. The rest of the team’s play isn’t. Nor is the offensive play-calling….

Anything can happen any Saturday. But when you have fine defensive squads that win game after game against good teams – Iowa, TCU come to mind – Jon consistently undervalues them because he doesn’t understand how defense can dominate and win games.

How else do you explain that today he ranks USC at 6-2 ahead of a fine, balanced 8-0 TCU team. A team that drubbed BYU – his ol’ #2 this season – 38-7.

calfan1

Jon,
Yes, OSU has beaten Cal 5 out of 7 and 3 straight in Berkeley. Great points. I won’t go as far as the poster “The Wisdom Cow” in saying that you Cal and what not, but you conveniently looked as OSU and Cal vs USC, but ignored OSU and Cal vs UCLA. This makes you look like Notre Dame and how they selectively pulish Wies’ record.

Again, your analysis is generally right on, and it pains me to admit as a Cal fan that like you I won’t be surprised if Cal loses given the history. I do feel that Riley (Kevin that is), Tedford, and Cal will find a way to get a W. This game is similar to one against UCLA in the sense that Cal just can’t afford to lose against OSU at home again just like it simply couldn’t afford another loss at UCLA.

Ranger John

Farmsep, Boise isn’t worried about those teams, though Idaho line looks much like a solid Pac 10 line, just one guy is…Nevada Reno played a great game vs Boise last year and their qb is probably the top rushing qb in the country.

Ranger John

I don’t see the Ducks losing to Stanford even with the emotional downturn that might affect Oregon this week. (Too much team speed!)

StanTheMan

Jon you make no sense on picking the over on the Stanford-Oregon game while taking Stanford and the points.

For the Cardinal to compete in this game they will have to control the clock, run the ball, and dominate TOP. That translates to fewer drives by both teams and fewer overall points.

If this is more of a track meet Oregon will win handily.

JR

So you pick the cougars over the cats? Be sure to take a week off drive over to half moon bay, have a cool one before playing Arizona. Arizona 45 Washington State 9
Oregon will probably win.

B

@P. O’Brien – While I agree that Wilner looks at the wrong things in terms of predicting future success, I don’t think bringing up the rankings is fair. Wilner is pretty explicit about the fact that his rankings are supposed to be based on what a team has done, as opposed to how good he perceives the team. I think he often has reasonable arguments for why he puts teams where he does, based on this criteria.

@calfan1 – What makes you think any of that history has any bearing on future success? The past is exactly that – the past. When talking about the future, the past is only useful in what aspects of it actually work at predicting the future, and using a few years of past history (not all of it even including the same coaching staffs) is not going to tell you anything about what might happen in the future. Unless you can show it can (which you cannot), just stop feeding into Wilner’s point. It’s meaningless.

El Pato Loco

Stanford over Oregon? Washington State over Arizona? I thought Thursday was Opposite Day.

Jon, its halftime of the Boise St. vs LA Tech game. Before the game Mark May said, “Business as usual” for Boise, Lou Holtz said, “no contest”.

Where did you get your info?

With their star RB (Porter) playing with a week old concussion and Livas all-purpose back with a foot injection, (which is a visible limp) Tech was trying desperately to show up for ESPN.

But Jon, it s 27-7 at the half as Rece Davis sez, the Broncos are “getting some style points” (gee, how come they didn’t get any vs Hawaii 58-9 or SJS 45-7 a close game for a half)? They go down in the BCS (I saw LA tech in person last year……a bowl winner….but that was last year.

And you said that they could compete? I am amazed that a doctor staff would allow a running back into a game after less than a week. It could have been 40-7….at the half! And I’m a Spartan fan, you got to give the Broncos their due.

Broncoboss

Ranger, Anything you would like to say…Get your foot out of your mouth and don’t pop off before the final gun…Your comment shows that you have no clue about college football..

Ranger John

I at least played a year(in college). The most telling thing about the game was the W for Boise…………again. Look at Iowa and style points, not many. There are times in games when 18-20 year olds make hasty decisions (like an errant pass). The onside kick was perfect special teams (one play). Boise had field position (own 30 yardline or better) the entire game.

Livas may have further injuries from the injections and playing. He and Porter don’t look like they may even be available for the SJS game.

Nevada is the only test I see for the Broncos and post game they said NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY THEM FROM THE BCS LEAGUES….duh……..business as usual for the BCS condemn weak scheduled WAC teams and Boise can’t buy a game, not even a solo “go there” game. Final gun was predicted!
Don’t you know there are swings that occur in games? “Mo” does occur, especially when your the home team and its your biggest game ever in Rushton.

Broncoboss

Ranger,
Boise played lousy against LA Tech…Many trips into the red zone and mostly got FG’s, or missed a FG. A few TD’s but not near enough for a good team…Not only Nevada but Idaho (7-2) will also be a test for the Broncos…
PS: I played 4 years of college football! Honest!!!

B

@El Pato Loco – Come on, a little reading comprehension. Wilner didn’t pick WSU to win, he picked them to cover the spread. He still picked AU to win.

Todd

Watch out for a straight up win by WSU today in Tuscon. I just have a feeling. The same feeling I had when I picked U of Washington to beat USC several weeks ago. Wazzu is ready for a break out performance. As for Cal: OSU over the Golden Bears by a lot. Oregon over Stanford by 20.

Futbol Thots

Pat O’Brien, although (irritatingly) condescending in tone, does make some good points. You have to look at certain ingredients important to predicting team performance: line play, coaching etc. But Pat tends to generalize these factors across the entire season. Jon W. is much better at dissecting each individual week, such as why UW beat USC: timing, injuries, location, etc. These factors change week to week. That’s why, right now, Oregon is a much better team than the one that lost to Boise State in the season opener. The season ebbs and flows, and so do the prospects of the teams.

meileau

Uh, oh. Those mean old Beavers are picking on the Bears. Those Beavers are such…..meanies. Right, Staan the Maan?

Trojan4Never

WOW! Didn’t the Trojans look AWESOME today? Put those Devils in their place and showed them who’s boss. Rose Bowl here we come!

uscmaddog

The Trojans looked bad tonight, but they did pull the game out…as beat up as they are, it was a “just win baby” game.